Opinion

Winter’s harsh bite

Unrelenting wind, bitterly cold nights and poor judgement

By Marshall Dury

Posted on Jan. 27, 2003, at 12:00 a.m.

Lately, it’s been cold enough for me to start thinking about giving up on going to class and hibernating in my bed for the next month.

Last week, I experienced the coldest weather I can actually remember gracing my popsicle cheeks and nearly split lips. I moved back into my dorm room on Jan. 18. With my guitar amp and laundry hamper in hand, I felt the frigid wind creep up my spine.

The Caribou National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration web site reported that when I was moving back into my room, the temperature was bumping around 20 below zero, and Wednesday the average temperature was one degree below zero.

With Icelandic-type temperatures gracing the Pine Tree State, I need to discuss a few things. When it is deathly cold outside, fashion doesn’t matter. Although I’m not completely innocent in this department, you cannot expect to go outside in a fleece.

Clothing choices don’t matter when you’re debating between looking trendy and dying.

Food for thought: smoking is a habit most of you cancer-stick favoring people should rethink in the current state of the Northeast’s weather forecasts. I saw a young male and female standing outside Hart Hall Wednesday afternoon having a smoke.

With rosy red cheeks and fingers shaking from the beginning stages of frostbite, people who are outside smoking need to be stripped naked and thrown into the snow. Why would you ever go outside into temperatures below zero degrees to have a cigarette? If you’re voluntarily putting yourself in a situation that requires you to poison yourself in already lung-constricting weather, you need your head examined.

Saturday night I was shopping at Thriftway and came across a particularly disturbed fellow. He walked up to the counter to pay for his items — in shorts. Saturday evening, the temperature was hovering around zero degrees. I couldn’t take it, so I told him, “Kind of cold for the shorts.”

He replied with “Ya, I figure you have got to air out the clothes that have been put up for a while.”

As the cashier began to laugh and I started to ponder several irrational ideas, the dude in the shorts showed no signs of being phased. Do his clothes need encouragement? Why does he need to air them out in the winter? The same night, I was hoping that I was the victim of a meaningless bet by a few friends rather than the witness of a sick young man. My credo: Do not wear shorts when it’s below 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I can’t even begin to fathom why someone wouldn’t dress for the weather. You’ll get your chance to redeem your image in the spring — I promise.

So here we are, not even half way through winter. Some people are only wearing sweaters to class and think they’re too cool for coats. If frostbitten fingers are cool for impressing the ladies then I guess my definition of cool is a bit dated. I would like to keep my fingers as opposed to impressing the ladies.

I leave you Eskimos with some advice: stay warm, don’t listen to your fashion sense, stay indoors and no matter what anyone else tells you, we still have 53 days of winter left.

Marshall Dury is a junior journalism major.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 27th, 2003, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.